Music Collections

The Europeana Music Collection is a selected sub-set of items which uses multi-lingual, diverse, topic-based API query terms to surface diverse content on the theme of Europe's Music Heritage

The recently relaunched Europeana Collections website is a searchable, visual interface to the complete collection of nearly 50 million records. Within this we have developed carefully crafted queries that return high quality thematic collections. The Europeana Music Collection is a broad selection of over 270,000 music related items, from pictures of composers to directly accessible audio files.

For the purposes of re-use these are filtered down to only items with directly accessible media files available under an open license.

Whilst at first the query may look daunting, this is has been optimised on the servers to ensure high performance (it has to, the API now powers the actual Collections website which receives over 1 million page views per month).

The query is:

qf=(PROVIDER:"DISMARC") OR (PROVIDER: "MIMO - Musical Instrument Museums Online") OR (DATA_PROVIDER:"Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden" AND TYPE:SOUND) OR (PROVIDER:"Europeana Sounds" AND provider_aggregation_edm_isShownBy:*) OR (DATA_PROVIDER:"Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision" AND provider_aggregation_edm_isShownBy:*) OR ((what:(music OR música OR musique OR musik OR musica OR muziek OR muzyka OR "notated music" OR "traditional and folk music" OR "western classical music" OR "folk songs" OR jazz OR "popular music" OR "sheet music" OR score OR "musical Instrument" OR partitur OR partituras OR gradual OR libretto OR oper OR concerto OR symphony OR sonata OR fugue OR motet OR estampie OR "gregorian chant" OR saltarello OR organum OR ballade OR chanson OR galliard OR laude OR madrigal OR pavane OR ricercar OR tiento OR toccata OR cantata OR chaconne OR gavotte OR gigue OR minuet OR partita OR passacaglia OR sarabande OR sinfonia OR lied OR mazurka OR "music hall" OR quartet OR quintet OR requiem OR rhapsody OR rondo OR scherzo OR "sinfonia concertante" OR waltz OR zanger OR singer OR chanteur OR chanteuse OR sång OR sångare OR sänger OR cantante OR sopran OR tenor OR piosenkarz OR śpiewak OR sängerin OR composer OR komponist OR compositeur OR compositore OR compositor OR orchestra OR orchester OR orkester OR orchestre)) AND (provider_aggregation_edm_isShownBy:*)) OR ("gieddes samling") OR (musik AND DATA_PROVIDER:"Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg") OR (title:gradual AND europeana_collectionName: "2021003_Ag_FI_NDL_fragmenta") NOT (DATA_PROVIDER: "Progetto ArtPast- CulturaItalia" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"Internet Culturale" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"Regione Umbria" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"Regione Emilia Romagna" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"Regione Lombardia" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"Regione Piemonte" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"National Széchényi Library - Hungarian Electronic Library" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"Phonogrammarchiv - Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften; Austria" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Musées de France" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"CER.ES: Red Digital de Colecciones de museos de España" OR DATA_PROVIDER:"National Széchényi Library - Digital Archive of Pictures" OR PROVIDER:"OpenUp!" OR RIGHTS:*rr-p* OR "opere d'arte visiva")

To use this, add &qf= and the above text to any api call. To view it in the API Console, click the link below and then paste it into the 'Refinement term(s):' box.

Our mission

We transform the world with culture. We build on Europe’s rich cultural heritage and make it easier for people to use for work, learning or pleasure. Our work contributes to an open, knowledgeable and creative society.

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Europeana Foundation is registered at the Chamber of Commerce under number 27307531, RSIN number is 8186.80.349.

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